Bücher der Reihe Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology

European leaders faced the Covid-19 pandemic by adopting very different leadership styles, characterized by diverging approaches to crisis communication, power management, and relationship-building with actors and stakeholders in the public sphere. The pandemic also highlighted the importance of the already-existing cleavage between populism and technocracy, positioning it at the centre of the political scene.These complex circumstances required a multidisciplinary perspective grounded in political sociology and communication studies. To address these issues, this book analyses the communication and leadership styles of seven European leaders, grouped into ¿political families¿. It analyses the cases of Angela Merkel and Erna Solberg to understand if and how female leaderships differentiated from their male counterparts. It then analyses the relationship between techno-populism and professional politics by comparing the cases of Giuseppe Conte, Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sanchez.Finally, it focuses on populist leaders Boris Johnson and Victor Orbán, who represent emblematic cases with opposite outcomes.

This book offers the first comparative study of far-right messaging and organizing efforts at the workplace level as well as responses by established trade unions, encompassing six European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland). Drawing on semi-structured interviews with workers and trade union actors with a focus on the automobile industry, the volume develops a classification of far-right strategies and trade union counter-strategies in comparative perspective. Based on a research project in cooperation with trade unions, the book is situated at the interface of comparative politics, industrial sociology, political economy, and political sociology.

This volume provides an updated analysis of the most significant constitutive aspects for the political sociology of the EU. It examines in detail how civic and political activism regarding the inclusion and integration of gender and sexual minorities, as well as migrants and refugees, have become substantial forces in Europe today. It exhibits a political sociology perspective that moves away from the predominant state-centrism and institutional focus in mainstream analyses of European politics. It brings to the fore the role of citizens, civil society and identity politics as well as transnational societal phenomena impacting on the ambivalent civic in/exclusion tendencies prevalent in the EU. The book highlights the linkage of EU institutions and policies to established and new societal actors in response to recent challenges of the EU.

This book provides the first systematic and comparative analysis of the intersections of populism and science in Europe, from the perspective of political sociology.Populism is the object of rich scholarly debate over its definition and the best way to approach its study. But until now, little attention has been paid to the relationships between populism and science. Recently, the Covid-19 crisis has exposed the contradictions in this relationship, and this book combines an analysis of the theoretical aspects of the relationship between populism and science with rigorous empirical research.The theoretical perspectives show populism as a thin-ideology, as discourse and performance, and as a political logic, consider both right-wing and left-wing populism, and focus on leaders as well as citizens. The book also offers an overview of controversies within different fields of ¿science¿, including case studies on food science, climate change, vaccination, gender theory, COVID-19, and environmental issues.The book will be of interest to scholars and students of a number of social science disciplines, including political sociology, political science and political psychology.

Departing from the idea that political controversies are embedded in the very framework of European integration, this volume focuses on the relationship between politicisation and European democracy. The contributors to this edited volume trace the various ways of understanding 'politicisation' before and beyond the 2019 European elections. The aim is to offer constructive reinterpretations of the concept for further research in the field. Encompassing different approaches, the book shows a plurality of perspectives and provides innovative analytical tools to make sense of the phenomenon of politicisation in the EU context.Assuming that EU politicisation can be seen both as vice and virtue depending on the way in which it takes place, the authors analyse under what conditions it has a positive or negative influence over European democracy. Emphasising that scholars ought to be aware of the normative assumptions underlying the conceptualisation of politicisation, the book illustrates how many of the features in European politics that were intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic were already present earlier.Tracing the Politicisation of the EU will be of interest to students and scholars in EU Studies, Comparative Politics, Media and Communication, Political Theory and Political Sociology.

It is the first book to theorise and conceptualise 'politicisation' across the epistemic communities of different subdisciplines, bringing together the different strands in the debate: (international) political theory, political sociology, comparative politics, EU studies, legal theory and international relations.

The author argues that the politicisation of TTIP should be seen as a symptom of the 'normal' politics of a democratic polity, as it enlarges the political arena by embedding European issues into national political debates.

This open access collection is devoted to an in-depth, qualitative analysis of practices of cross-national solidarity in response to the current political and social crises, from citizens' initiatives to networks of cooperation among civil society actors.

The Political Economy of Policy Ideas contributes to the growing scholarly literature on ideational political economy and labour market regulation by providing a systematic analysis of the idea of active inclusion and its three core principles: activation, conditionality and personalization.

He develops a framework to account for the dynamics, trajectory and timing of the cycle of contention that unfolded in Spain in the shadow of the Great Recession, contributing not only to the field of social movement studies but to our broader understanding of European politics, political sociology, political economy and economic sociology.

Famous examples of entrepreneurial parties, including Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia and Geert Wilders's Party for Freedom, alongside their lesser-known counterparts, serve in this book as valuable material for conceptual innovation and the investigation into why certain entrepreneurial party types succeed or fail.

Departing from the idea that political controversies are embedded in the very framework of European integration, this volume focuses on the relationship between politicisation and European democracy. The contributors to this edited volume trace the various ways of understanding ¿politicisation¿ before and beyond the 2019 European elections. The aim is to offer constructive reinterpretations of the concept for further research in the field. Encompassing different approaches, the book shows a plurality of perspectives and provides innovative analytical tools to make sense of the phenomenon of politicisation in the EU context.Assuming that EU politicisation can be seen both as vice and virtue depending on the way in which it takes place, the authors analyse under what conditions it has a positive or negative influence over European democracy. Emphasising that scholars ought to be aware of the normative assumptions underlying the conceptualisation of politicisation, the book illustrates how many of the features in European politics that were intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic were already present earlier.Tracing the Politicisation of the EU will be of interest to students and scholars in EU Studies, Comparative Politics, Media and Communication, Political Theory and Political Sociology.

It is the first book to theorise and conceptualise 'politicisation' across the epistemic communities of different subdisciplines, bringing together the different strands in the debate: (international) political theory, political sociology, comparative politics, EU studies, legal theory and international relations.

By zooming in on the coordinated procedures of environmental policy-making in European consensus systems and by interconnecting theories of democracy, knowledge and science, organisation and decision-making, the author develops institutional solutions to the tensions between epistemic and democratic demands on public policy-making.

It explores how populism impacted on European institutions and civil society and investigates their reactions and strategies to overcome the challenges posed by populists.

This book provides an innovative and in-depth analysis of how attitudes towards democracy and political institutions differ across 31 countries in Europe, and how these attitudes have fluctuated over time.

This book analyses the impact of socio-structural variables, such as social class, religion, urban/rural residence, age and gender, on influencing an individual's voting preferences. There has also been a shift in value orientations, for example from religious to secular values and from more authoritarian to libertarian values.

This open access collection is devoted to an in-depth, qualitative analysis of practices of cross-national solidarity in response to the current political and social crises, from citizens' initiatives to networks of cooperation among civil society actors.

Processes of neoliberalisation have caused deeply segregated urban landscapes defined by deepening social inequality, rising unemployment, racism, securitization of urban spaces and welfare state withdrawal, particularly from poor peripheral areas, where tensions between marginalized youth and police often manifest in public spaces.

This book explores how the multiplicity of nationalist parties across the European Union have embraced or refused the process of European integration and made it a platform for transnational coordination in the European arena.